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Timothy S. McTaggart's Archived Blogs Jan-Mar 04

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So here we go again with the latest and greatest for all those web fans out there (or not). The cell phone remains off, but I did get a reply to my E-mail. I'd sent an E-mail last week to West Central Wireless, explaining why I inactivated my account. The reply from a one each Kim Tumlinson, mentioned a coming change in the advertising. There may have been someone else out there that wasn't impressed either. The reply also extended an invitation for a second chance. So I'll probably reactivate the (explicative deleted this time) thing, but with a different phone number. Next topic: the office is still crazy and stupid. Our computer connections with the rest of the world went on the fritz today (which took down applications our users need to do their work). These network problems reside outside of our jurisdiction, so we are stuck having to rely on a pathetic excuse for tech support that is supposed to keep these networks running (they weren't even aware of the problem until we called them). Too much stuff to do with too little, with resulting high frustration levels. My few brain cells that still work are screaming for me to go find a beach or ski slope somewhere. Not sure about the skiing part now, since the snow within driveable distance is getting a bit slushy. Yuck. This is the first time in the last five years that I've not gone skiing somewhere during the winter. I resolve not to let that happen again. Better get a beach in the works meanwhile, at least until the snows make it back. Next topic: hey, we have the music happening, which is probably the only reason I have somewhat kept my sanity (but musicians are supposed to be neurotic, as it is a prerequisite for creativity). MGB has a gig this Saturday at the Scrub Pub (call it big time, or the acid test, but hopefully the former). We're working up some new songs too, some of which we'd tried out on our home base of O'brians Sports Bar a couple of Saturdays ago. The crowd loved us, even with a few goofs in the new songs. An ambitious goal is for us to add a rather difficult song for the Scrub Pub gig, namely the song 'Tom Sawyer' by the band Rush. I think we're up to emulating it. I've spent a few nights working on the bass solo in the middle of the thing. Rush's bass player has a nose probably larger than that of Carl Maulden's. Hopefully I have enough nose to pull this one off. Will know by this time next week (and I plan to record the evidence on the 8 track digital machine that night). So if you're reading this, come on out to the Scrub Pub this Saturday (27 Mar) here in San Angelo for some wholesome Rock and Roll. Make a bunch of noise for the tape too. Later folks, and all the best to ya.

I killed my cell phone account with West Central Wireless last Tuesday. I was irked by the current radio ad being run by another part of this company for some Internet product. For those of you who have read up on my web site and previous blogs, you know my soapbox about the poor production value of local radio ads. I'm weary of commercials that deem it necessary to scream at me, and I don't feel that I need to continue patronizing an outfit that now stoops to this level of advertising. However my killing the cell phone was what a psychologist would probably call 'displacement' where I took out aggression on some less deserving item, rather than what has really been inducing stress (like my funky job??!!!). So I probably owe some account manager at West Central an apology for bending his ear. The cell phone remains off though, and I don't think I'm going to miss the calls from the office on the goddamn thing when I'm out of town, visiting the parents, etc. This also kills a bill, so it can't be bad in that respect either. Cell phone or not, weekends have been taken up with stuff at the office. I barely even have time to get back to Menard to see if my property is still semi intact. Pardon the vernacular here, but this sucks! Not sure if I want to see what my blood pressure is. Better call it a night for now, lest it get worse. More, hopefully optimistic stuff to follow. Sheesh!!!

Leap year day, which should obviously warrant a blog. This is Sunday of a somewhat down weekend for me. Fortunately I didn't have to go into the office this weekend. Beautiful day today. Seems I'm trying to get the crud however. Interesting... I was typing on this blog at the same time while chatting with a fellow AISK alumnus. She mentions that the next reunion may be in that N'awleans town. Guess we'll see if I get sucked into coordinating the music again. I'm trying to remember who I'd talked to recently about the last reunion and our musical attempts. Whoever it was seemed to think I was a pretty good keyboard player. Yikes. I do remember somehow getting away with some Santana. Well, the office is still pretty crazy, with testing and then getting the next update to CHCS II out. Another subject here, I noted my hit counter on my home page was not working but seems to be okay now. We're at 786 hits since I set the thing up. Now onto a different subject again. Reader discretion may be advised regarding the rest of this blog. On a wild lark last night, I headed out to some smut store by the name of Love Shack, on the north end of town. This one had mention in the paper recently, when the city of Grape Creek, just north of San Angelo complained about the billboards advertising the place. Believe it or not, this place took those billboards down. I figured that qualified for a visit. My first note of the place was the abundance of large potholes in the parking lot and a Sam's Club type neon "Open" sign. The potholes would have challenged the suspension system on any vehicle, except for maybe my old truck. The place had a large inventory of rental tapes and DVDs of quite a variety (!). In addition was a whole wall full of sex toys that I'd only seen on the internet, before last night. Rather progressive for San Angelo, I'd say. I'm surprised the fundamentalist folks haven't managed to shut it down yet. While I was in the place, a whole group of girls came in and began oohing and ahhing over the sex toys (so to speak... -one actually bought something). Snippets of conversation I heard were things about batteries, etc. This would have been great for sound bites had I brought in a recorder. The manager was real cool and says they get a bunch of women in there. Not the demographics I'd figure for customers to a smut store. I left without buying or renting anything though. Okay, after THAT topic, what else to mention? Guess I could return to the office topic for a minute, at least long enough to mention that I'm just the piano player in this whorehouse. Think I'd better quit at this point. Later, folks.

Here we go with another Ridiculous Mad Fold In, ... well actually another blog entry (I canned my subscription to Mad Magazine when they started running ads, but that's a whole other subject). The Air Force's broadway type ensemble known as Tops In Blue did their San Angelo segment of the tour this last Tuesday night. It took place at the new Stephens Arena on the Angelo State University campus. I've been a fan of Tops In Blue for some time. I was actually going to audition for them back in my Air Force days, but the office got too crazy for me to work up anything and I had to cancel (my, how times have changed regarding crazy offices!!). Once again I digress, though. Tops In Blue performed their legendary show Tuesday night; probably one of the best ones I've seen yet. The crowd was enthusiastic and loved the show. This year's Tops In Blue has toured all over the world, to include Iraq (which they mentioned). The program also stated that they'd toured in Afghanistan, but offered no further details. No mention of the Afghanistan segment was made during the show. My point of reference about Tops In Blue is that a fellow musician, Dan Davidson, played keyboards with them on their 1987 tour (the same tour I had hoped to audition for). He had some pretty crazy stories to tell about this time with TIB (that's the acronym for Tops In Blue that only a privileged few are allowed to use, with the rest being subjected to a fine, from what I was told). I just ran a web search, found Dan's listing in TIB priors, and sent an E-mail. Will see if he gets it. I may still have his work E-mail though. (So do I suck up a fine for using the TIB acronym?) May be time to call it a night here. Anyway, Tops In Blue put on an incredible show, and I wanted to make note of it for the blog tonight. Stay tuned.

We're halfway through the second month of this New Year already. The office has been quite crazy with us taking on workload of two people who are leaving this week. I'll not go into details in this forum, due to it being somewhat accessible to anyone who can browse the web. Suffice it to say that it hasn't been good on blood pressure levels. So if I post my next blog from some internet cafe in Mexico (or Kabul Afghanistan), you will know what happened. Well, that aside for the moment. I did a gig Saturday night with Frank Treviño's band, as a third string bass player. Both their primary and secondary bass players were unavailable. Miles, their secondary bass player (also my successor with Old Hat Band), gave Frank my phone number. One phone call later from Frank, I accepted, not quite sure what I was getting into. Frank Treviño is a long time established musician here, who heads a band that plays mostly big band music. I was not the only substitute for the night either. A drummer and sax player were performing similar duties. However I was probably the most illiterate of the lot with reading music scores, from which most of the songs were played. I do read some music, such as for piano (see my notes in my bands page) and for tenor in our church choir, but not very well for electric bass. Fortunately, chords were written on most of the scores, so as long as I didn't get lost, I was somewhat able to hang in there. The rest of the time I had to trust it to my good ear to follow whatever Frank was playing on guitar. Believe it or not, (and this may date me a bit) I did know nearly half of the songs we played that night, so I was able to get a groove with most of those. I'll admit to a few random bass notes when I got lost, though. Frank was most helpful getting me pointed back in the right direction. I'm not sure that he'd call me again to play bass, but he was most thankful that night to all of us who sat in for the gig. I'd do it again, given the opportunity. Onto MGB stuff now. We're working up some new songs to have ready for upcoming gigs next month. The rock and roll is a lot more familiar too, if but rougher on the fingers. I've got more stuff worthy of blog entries, but I think I'd better quit, lest I tax attention span of readers. More later. Stay tuned (that could refer to fellow musician's insturments).

Well I had plans tonight to crank up the my LPFM station (A.K.A. the 'wardrobe malfunction' of San Angelo FM) but I'm a bit wiped out from this work week. So maybe this'll happen another Friday night in the not too distant future. An obvious topic, had I opted to do the broadcast tonight, would be a particular half time show (or showing, if you will) from last Sunday. I think Jay Leno took care of that topic quite well already. That's not to say there won't be plenty of fodder still to come, with the suings, outraged fundamentalist expostulations and whatnot. So stay tuned for possible effort of mine to keep listeners 'abreast' of the situation (rim shot) in a later program. One of our office employees returned from Europe early last year, where the puritan attitudes about things broadcast and things otherwise exposed are not as prevalent. His comment was that grossly vulgar and violent things are broadcast here in the states, without as much as the batting of an eye, and here we go off the deep end over a frontal exposure. Personally, I'm not sure if the Stupid Bowl... um Super Bowl (it may warrant the first name now) may have been the best place to further challenge our broadcast standards. Look for Homeland Security to exert its force over that one now. G'night.

I went to something last night out at Goodfellow Club that was known as a 'Burns Night'. This was the second annual one of these. I'd heard about it last year and initially wondered if the food would be somewhat beyond well done, before I discovered that this was an event to celebrate the Scottish poet, Robert Burns. My dad asked me if I was interested in going this year. Given our name being McTaggart, I figured it a good idea. My friend Nancy was also interested in going, so the three of us all showed up. The event started similar to a military formal dinner (such as a dining in/out) but without all the odd protocol, with calls to points of order about said protocol and violators being sent to the grog bowl. Instead of chimes to indicate time for each part of the evening, there were bagpipes. Some of Burn's as well as other poetry were read with varying attempts and degrees of Scottish accent. My acquaintance with haggis was also made. The haggis was 'piped in' with grand ceremony too. I thought that was great. The crowd loved the poetry, especially the 'Toast to the Lassies'. 'The Reply' from the fairer gender was not a bad answer back, but Nancy told me that this 'reply' was way too easy on us guys. To be honest, I was expecting a better bashing of us guys, too after the 'Toast to the Lassies.' Maybe they were giving us a break. Other folks volunteered their poetry towards the end of the night. This included one of our docs by the name of McTaggart (she'd married into the name, and then divorced). She volunteered a poem dedicated to her fiancé who'd proposed to her at a party at this same place some seven months ago (an MGB gig). I joke with her about getting a last name that hopefully won't be variously spelled and pronounced, such as ours. The evening wound up with the joining of hands and the singing of 'Auld Lang Syne' (Burns wrote this song with which we ring in the New Year). I recall that I did a bass guitar rendition of 'Auld Lang Syne' when we (DCB) rang in this New Year out at Lee's and was most glad to note that no skunks followed tonight (see my 7 Jan 04 blog). When this was over, some DJ cranked up hip-hop stuff (may or may not be considered music) at which point we opted to split. So to conclude with a quote from Burns at this point: "And each took off his several way, Resolved tae meet some ither day."

With it being barely halfway through the first month, I hope I can say that this year is going a heck of a lot better than last year was at this time. Last night was the famed "Night of Yanurary 16th" and 100.9 FM hit the airwaves to celebrate that. It was a much better show than my 26 Dec show, the last time I cranked up the transmitter. This assessment is based on playback of the tape this morning. Off to another radio related topic now... I have been an avid fan of XM satellite radio, especially given the atrocious FM here in San Angelo. However XM does have some music channels, on which they run limited commercials, but according to their announcement, all these commercials will cease as of next month. I hear a collective cheer, and am most glad that after paying my money for subscription, I don't have to listen to any more of the damned things. I think of the movie "FM" in which an executive gets a garbage can full of commercial tapes dumped on him. Thanks so much to all of you at XM. Next topic. Having been in employ related to federal government, I get the Monday of this weekend off, in celebration of Martin Luther King. Had to play the "Pride in the Name of Love" song by U2 in my broadcast last night. Okay, another topic. I just purchased the DVD of Blue Man Group from their "The Complex" rock tour, and watched it this afternoon. Amazing. This was performance art as only Blue Man Group can do. It was both a parody and tribute to arena rock, to include much-needed humor and intellectual spin. Some very unique instruments are used, to include these 'airpoles' that sound a lot like turntable 'scratch'. So far I've not tried setting up lengths of PVC pipe to get percussive bass notes, at least yet. Probably climaxing the show for me was the rock movement #78, the Fake Ending, that normally proceeds the hopeful encores. Both blatant and hilarious, the 'Fake Ending' title appeared on the big screen behind the abandoned stage to crowd cheers and laughter. Too bad I didn't get to see that one in person. A technical note, here, I'll bet the sound person(s) was(were) incredibly busy. Well, it's time to say g'night, and make my real ending for this evening. Later folks. Stay tuned.

I've finished archiving last quarter's blogs. So on to this first blog of the New Year. This blog could be a little long winded. I'm trying to figure out what the hell ate my stuff before the middle of October last year in now archived blogs. Look for the note I put in the last quarter's blogs, at the end of my 19 Oct entry if you want to really know more. But on to other things now... So here we sit, almost exactly a week into the New Year and so far, so good. Seeing the passing of 2003 has not necessarily hurt my feelings. The year consisted of several accomplishments, punctuated with disasters and stress levels. It basically could have been better. I spent New Year's Eve with Dan Calhoun Band (DCB), partying out at the house of Lee, our drummer, in big city of Paint Rock. My temptation so far for naming the new year, is to call it the "Year of the Polecat" as we had this skunk that refused to leave the area (it may have been rabid, or at least obsessed with eating cat food on the steps to the house). Our fearless drummer observed subject skunk and exited the house with one shotgun at port arms. I opted to find an interior hallway at that point. KABLAAAAMMMO!!! The last act of the skunk in becoming an ex-skunk was to discharge its payload next to the band room. This rendered the band room uninhabitable, ending our jam session for the night. Even with Lee removing the corpus delecti, things were still most intense. Those, such as myself who'd planned use of floor in the band room for sleeping purposes, had to make other arrangements. Fortunately it was a warm night and the outside air was far less skunky than that in most of the house. I set up camp at the end of the house away from the skunk, and put a box fan in a door to get some breathable air. Amazingly, most of the skunk smell was gone by the morning. We jammed some more on New Year's Day, and then went our separate ways. The next day, I headed to the Davis Mountains for a weekend personal sabbatical. I stayed at the Balmorhea State Park just off of I-10. There is a huge spring fed pool there, as well as a desert "swamp" that had been revived about nine years ago. Canals of spring water traverse the whole park and feed a lake downstream that is used for irrigation. The weather was amazingly warm, and a little windy. The water temperature of the springs was cool, but not cold, so I opted to jump in the pool. It was great. I swam the couple hundred feet across the pool, looking down in the deep part at scuba divers working on their certification dives (this place is very popular for scuba training). My scuba certification was nearly 18 years ago. I lent my encouragement to a few good looking students and wondered if it may be time to do a refresher. The next day I headed to the parents' ranch and wished mom a happy 80'Th birthday. She gets to be the same age as dad for a few weeks. This provokes the observation about all of us getting further on down the line. May we all be there to see what happens and in the meantime, I wish all of you reading this, a happy, productive, and prosperous New Year.

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